The generation and delivery of one or more chemicals is part of the on-going operation and maintenance of a swimming pool. Chlorine is one of the most important chemicals used for maintaining a swimming pool in a safe and healthy condition. Chlorine neutralizes many harmful pathogens and retards the growth of algae. Typically, in a non-commercial environment, chlorine is dispensed into the swimming pool manually, either by direct application in liquid or powder format, or in a time-delayed manner, such as in tablet form applied in, for example, a floating dispenser. However, the manual dispensing of chlorine is typically not permitted and/or not practical in a commercial or municipal swimming pool.
Existing technology for treating and disinfecting swimming pools has been standardized to use chlorine as the primary disinfectant. While the treatment efficacy of chlorine has been called into question recently with chlorine-resistant pathogens, the industry is entrenched in this technology and is not generally agreeable to investigating alternative sanitation methodologies, such as ozone, chlorine-dioxide (CLO2) and ultraviolet (UV) sterilization.
Some of the more dangerous pathogens that can inadvertently be released into and persist in a swimming pool are cryptosporidium, Giardia, or other chorine-resistant pathogens.
With particular regard to cryptosporidium, owing to its structure, cryptosporidium displays a resistance to typical chlorination methods, which render these typical chlorination methods largely ineffective at neutralizing these pathogens at any but extremely high dosages. It has been realized that chlorine dioxide (ClO2) is particularly effective to neutralize and combat the growth of cryptosporidium, and other chlorine-resistant pathogens in a swimming pool.
However, because chlorine dioxide exists only as an unstable gas it must be generated onsite and used immediately. Unfortunately, while methods to generate chlorine dioxide are available, the safe and consistent application of chlorine dioxide into a swimming pool remains difficult.